"Believe the Warning, Not Your Eyes"

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Above is a slide from my program about weather risk mitigation that I have delivered to literally scores of businesses in the last three years.

So, this story in the Omaha World-Herald greatly saddens me:

Anderson and Dunning could see a looming thunderstorm. Anderson’s wife called to relay a report of a tornado near Stanton, about 22 miles southwest of Wayne.

Anderson said he and Dunning saw no indications of a tornado. They drove on.

Shrouded in rain, the tornado ripped a path along the southeast corner of Wayne, a community of 5,660. 

The men, officials at Wayne State University, were struck by the tornado. It was shrouded in rain and invisible. One is in a medically-induced coma after being crushed under a giant trash container and the other is okay but shaken.

Rain-wrapped tornadoes occur all too frequently: The 2011 Joplin tornado was invisible. One hundred sixty-one died.

There are dozens of smartphone apps (yes, we have one at AccuWeather) that will keep you safe in dangerous weather. And, yes, there are some excellent radio stations in that area that do a fine job of keeping their listeners up on the weather in tornado situations.

But, apps and radio don't work unless you seek out information and heed it. You can't count on being able to visually identify a tornado in time.
Believe the warning, not your eyes!

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